Ok, it’s late and I don’t present my arguments particularly well anyway. Let’s just end the argument on the agreement that all WWF fans are mental giants. I’m surprised they aren’t running our country… oh wait…
BP
sigh
Nowhere did I claim that “all WWF fans are mental giants”.
I’m just saying that WWF Fan !(necessarily)= idiot and/or redneck, and making assumptions about people based on one of their leisure hobbies is probably not a good idea.
Also, feel free to draw all the exaggerated insipid conclusions (“You’re right, I’m wrong, Hulk Hogan’s IQ was 268”) you’d like from what I am saying.
Sleep well.
Wait a minute…I thought this was the Pit, not Great Debates. Hmm…
I got a question: what are you going to ‘educate us’ about? Politics? We know that the majority don’t always win elections. The show Friends? About a group of people living in apartments that should have, in New York City, wiped out their entire incomes two times over? Or maybe you want to educate us fans about Survivor, or what I call The “Group of whiners ‘roughing out’ in Africa for thirty days, while many people in Kenya live that way and worse for generations” show.
Or what about opera? After Verdi, there is no one else. Or plays? No modern play was better than “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night”. Or maybe musicals? Oh please!! A media that has to survive by rehashing 1960’s or modern Disney movies and charge $100 per ticket is to me a lost cause.
Now, what you were going to educate us fans about?
capacitor
I don’t understand - what were you trying to prove? That you know a tiny bit about a few subjects?
Pencil-neck Geeks
Freddie Blassie, Legendary bad guy from the 50’s and 60s. Actually he sang a song by that name, I have no idea as to whether he wrote it or not. Dr. Demento used to feature Freddie often. I believe Freddie sang some other songs as well. He was really a pretty nice guy, but mean as hell.
Seriously folks, I think capacitor was just trying to provide a humorous respite from all the slinging going on. I know it’s late, but better late than never.
Oh to be 50 again. 
A link to Freddie, if you’re interested: http://www.neowrestling.com/bios/blassie.shtml
Capacitor, I am in awe. You have singlehandedly gathered up every worthwhile form of entertainment and selection of human knowledge I could ever want and summarized it for me! Now all I have left to do is watch testosterone-poisoned mutants oil up and play rough with each other.
So this is the Pit, eh? Let me be the first to call you a shithead. We’re not going to educate you about any goddamned thing. It’s obviously not worth the effort, and I doubt you’d be able to pick up much, as I can’t teach very well in your native language of grunts and obscene gestures. Actively entertain yourself, to keep your hands busy so you can’t force your foot any further into your mouth.
PhiloVance, I’ve heard the song. I don’t think its funny. Especially the ‘cutting one up for bait’ bit.
Learn to read. I specifically pointed out twice that those were really simple examples of how there is more going on than might meet your eye. I did that so that someone wouldn’t say “WOW, look how COMPLEX and DEEP that is!” Nice of you to choose to ignore that part. Those weren’t even storylines - they were incidents that took less than 30 seconds and were part of larger angles.
And on a vaguely related note, could somebody more fannish than I post a couple of links to the several wrestling fan sites that are more interested in the behind-the-scenes stuff (face/heel turns, etc.) than they are with, say, who has the coolest finisher?
Believe it or not, oh WWF naysayers, there is writing going on here, and some of us watch wrestling because of it. Sure it’s not exactly highbrow entertainment, but, as has been asked before, what the hell is there on network TV that is?
KKBattousai, I would be glad to help you, assuming that you don’t already know this stuff.
Your first stop should probably be http://www.wrestlingobserver.com which is Dave Meltzer’s newsletter. He is largely regarded as the grand-daddy of all pro-wrestling “insiders.”
http://www.prowrestlingtorch.com might be worth your while at times, but you’ll have to read a lot of annoying crap before you get to any good stuff.
http://www.deathvalleydriver.com tends to range wildly from insightful commentary to mindless fanboy crap.
There is also http://www.wrestlingclassics.com which is the place where a bunch of 90something year old men long for the days of Verne Gagne, and spend the rest of their time telling the world that Vince McMahon is the Antichrist.
There are many more, but I just finished work, so my brain is not working very well.
Well the world dont move, to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
Never has the Theme tune to Different Strokes been more appropriate to a debate on the SD.
Look. Just because something is “Low brow entertainment” does not make the people who watch it low brow. Personally, watching a greek tragedy about someone having sex with his Mom dosent do it for me. YMMV. You seem to be using broader brush strokes than Thomas Kinkade.
If your going to have a go at wrestling fans, throw in fans of all the Vapid Soap Operas on TV. Move along to everything on MTV, Star Trek fans, Star Wars fans all Sci-fi, the Sci-fi channel, Fox Networks, and any movie ever made.
Wrestling is escapism. And if you think its all just steroid freaks grunting, and that we fans are uneducatable, I hereby invite you to sit on a unladen African Swallow made of rusty steel.
Learn a bit about what your labelling first.
Ahhh… the old predictable “attack the evil guy’s literacy.” Good play old chap.
What, exactly, were those “larger angles”? I would be enthralled to study these story lines, I’m sure. It’s ridiculous for you to argue “trust me, these stories are deep, you just don’t know because you aren’t a fan!”
Sorry, but you’ll need to do some serious arguing to change my notion that the only objective the writers are probably given are, “See how far and how ridiculous you can go.”
I just remembered where I saw the hillbilly fans that I referred to earlier though. I was flipping channels, and saw a “behind the scenes” thing for wrestling. I think it may have been on E!, but I’m not sure. Anyway, this isn’t the only show of it’s type, as I know MTV has had one recently also.
Watching a show like this does nothing but enforce my suspicions. These are direct interviews with the wrestler, and just as I suspected, these guys are pretty damn smart, witty, and down-to-earth. Which is why they are making so much money off the fans! They realize all they have to do is invest ‘x’ time and ‘y’ money in steroids, and you (the fan) will return ‘z’ profits. (‘z’ is normally a 6 digit number in the form of a paycheck). It’s a simple mathematic equation that they have figured out, and it has made each of them very wealthy. Congratulations to them for harnessing capitalism. Shame on you for perpetuating capitalism. 
BP
Sure, let me just type out a two-year-long storyline and all of its twists and turns here for you. To what end? You’ve already demonstrated that you’re biased against it. I’m sure Kurasawa could book the next six months of WWF and you would still just see it as guys in tights grunting.
If Vince Russo is in charge, maybe. He tried that. It didn’t work. He’s no longer in the business.
How very high brow and unpredictable of you, old chap.
A lot of them are still fans themselves, you know.
Curious - in your posts on gaming you seemed to say a few things that are applicable here. Not the least of which was:
Indeed.
sigh Some people will NEVER get out of the 80s. While steroids are still in use by some wrestlers, their use has greatly diminished in the past few years. Some of the old relics still show evidence of such drug use (Scott Steiner being the most obvious one), but most of the younger guys (as well as the older guys who are still around) are not the hulking giants of 15 years ago. Can you look at guys like Lance Storm, Edge, Christian, the Hardy Boyz, Chris Jericho, Hurricane Helms, Tajiri, TAKA Michinoku, Dean Malenko, and countless others and try to say with a straight face that they are steroid users? The only guys I can think of right now that I would suspect of recent steroid use are Test (Andrew Martin), and Billy Gunn. While I’m sure there are a few more, they’re the only two I can come up with on the spot.
OK, Perm, you tell me if I’m missing something here:
You are trying to attack wrestling fans for their lowbrow entertainment. To help prove your point, you cite claims of watching shows on E! and MTV?
Forgive me if I find that a tad funny.
::sigh::
The sad part is, those networks are a step above wrestling…
Your gaming argument doesn’t apply, unless you can paste in a quote where I claim that ALL fans are mindless automatons. How real do YOU think is is Sac?
BP
HA!!! Arguing-in-bad-faith alarm!!!
Well, seriously, to each his own, I guess.
Ummm… no. Actually, fuck it. You’re just wrong. I suppose that “you’re just wrong” is not much of a point in a debate, but it’s not like you felt the need to provide an explanation to support your assertion that “those networks are a step above wrestling” in the first place.
OK, but do they provide “some kind of valuable mental entertainment?” (your words.)
Note: In order to get the full effect of this one, try to read it with an insane, shrieking voice.
“It takes a good man to beat me, Shamrock!!! It just doesn’t take him very long!!!”
–Mick Foley, in character as “Mankind” prior to a match with Ken Shamrock.
Here’s your “valuable mental entertainment.” It’s called “humour.” Granted, it’s not side-splittingly funny, but I, along with millions of viewers, found it amusing. Shall we dismiss humour as valuable mental entertainment?
That wasn’t his funniest line by a longshot, but considering that most of his best lines were spoken in 1998, you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t remember a whole bunch of them.
This line is truly tasteless, and really does little more than play on a stupid stereotype, but I think I’ve been in Asia too long, so I found it quite funny.
Chris Jericho was getting over (becoming popular) as a heel (bad guy) in Japan. One line he used to get a rise out of the crowd (which was tricky, considering that only few of them understood English) was:
“I love Japan. Japan is the only country in the world where I have an ENORMOUS penis!”
Those who are familiar with Jericho, and who know the tone he usually uses when cutting his promos (making speeches on the microphone) will be best suited to appreciate this.
Yes, I am aware that this kind of quote will only provide ammo to those who think of wrestling as mindless crap, but I’m posting it anyway.