We hope he's aware of the irony of what he's doing

Our long national nightmare is over; W.W. Herenton is stepping down as mayor of Memphis on July 31st. And not a moment too soon. Look at this laundry list of failures the man failed to achieve during his five terms as mayor.

• Failed to ensure sound fiscal management of the City of Memphis ^[11]
• Fraud allegations involving national money for the building of the FedEx Forum ^[12]
• Failed to communicate effectively with the City Council ^[13]
• Failed to address multiple allegations of improprieties regarding Memphis Light Gas and Water ^[13]
• Served as the prime target and catalyst for the City Charter rewrite ^[14]
• Angered citizens to the point of becoming a target of a (failed) citizen recall effort ^[15]
• Proposed raising property taxes by 17% while taxes on his personal home were delinquent.
• Called for a halt to early voting due to alleged "irregularities". The Shelby County Election Commission stated that early voting would continue.^[16],
• Benefited personally from the rezoning of the Greyhound bus terminal property;
• Done little in response to the significant rise in crime under his leadership; he stated that "No mayor in any American City can solve the crime problem."^[17]
• Appointed new leadership of the Memphis Public Library over the objections of the Tennessee Library Association.^[18]
• Failed to address criticism in the way that cases and staffing were being handled by the Memphis Sexual Assault Resource Center, and caused a racially-charged argument in the council meeting where he accused the city councilman of being a racist.

A run off will be held to determine the new mayor of Memphis. And who is a candidate? None other then WWE Hall of Famer and Memphis resident, Jerry "The King" Lawler. Yes a king is running for office. The "Evil King of Memphis" no less. Luckily, the investigative reporters of LOL, Wresslin' were able to get a pre-release copy of King Lawler's first speech. Here are some of the policies he'd wish to enact, should the will of the people of Memphis wish him to:

• Put money into Memphis educational system.
• Open "Andy Kaufman Memorial Theater" in heart of Memphis's legendary performing district.
• Declare November 29th to be "Mayor Motorboat Day", where the mayor of Memphis may place his face into the chest of any female citizen up to four times.
• Replace alcohol and cigarettes with Coca-Cola Classic.
• Appoint Debra McMichael "Secretary of Puppies".

• Lower age of consent in Memphis to 14 years old.
• Will allow "Puppy Madness" to be a viable defense in Memphis sexual assault cases.
• Change method of execution from lethal injection to piledriver.
• Sons of mayors will be allowed to be as publicly intoxicated as they want.

• Women, not just men, will be required to "pull the straps down" when they are about to finish off a tough task.
• Fill up the holes in Main Street. This is not what it sounds like.
  

Also, being a broadcaster himself, Lawler promises unprecedented access with the media. Namely, he will squeal with ecstasy every time a female reporter wears something remotely revealing. He also promises to draw all his campaign posters himself.

Of course, Batman doesn't like him. That could be a problem for any candidacy.

OH BABY, I like it Raw! The Animal's Kingdom

Matt and Adam take the brand extension very seriously. They each only identify with one brand and actively follow it. Matt bleeds Raw red and Adam has Smackdown blue coursing through his veins. Being soldiers in the ongoing war for brand supremacy has charged both of them up enough to provide handy recaps of the previous week's show. That way, no new viewers will feel lost. Thus, every Monday and Friday, we here at LOL, Wresslin' will offer you a refresher. Hey, it's the least we can do.

Pressed for time today folks, so lightning update is on the way!

As you might have guessed from the title of today's article, Batista is back on Raw! No, he didn't miraculously heal himself - he's here on slightly different conditions than normal.

You see, Vince McMahon, for whatever reason, has to abide by the things that Trump put in place during his week of owning Raw. Why? Why can't McMahon, having purchased Raw back from Trump, change things the way he wants them? Lazy writers, that's why. In any case, one of those changes was a guest GM every week.

Which brings us to Batista. He's our guest GM for this (last!) week. I think you can see where this is going.


He makes two orders: Randy has to face three new members of Raw (part of trade that Trump made that McMahon also has to stick to) in a gauntlet match, and there will be a tournament for Number 1 Contender at the Night of Champions.

Which is where our matches begin for the night. First it will be Triple H versus MVP to move on to the finals.

Any guesses on how this will turn out?


Exactly.

The other two competitors in the tournament are John Cena and The Miz. This is where suspension of disbelief ends, WWE writers, because at some level, you expected me to believe that the finals for this Number 1 Contenders tournament was going to be The Miz versus MVP. Seriously? Seriously?


Again, I'll post a picture from this match, but do we really need to even fight this thing?


WHAAATT? Could it be??


Right. That's better. So Cena and Triple H will fight to go to Night of Champions.

The Million Dollar Man is going to be next week's (this week's) guest GM. I wonder who that might favor?

I wonder....

Kelly x 2 was in a match for some reason or another. I'm supposed to pay attention to that?


She didn't win.

Finally, it's the gauntlet match. Randy's first opponent is Evan Bourne.

At least he does this.

So yeah, he lost. Then it was Jack Swagger.


He thought he'd make an impression on Randy and not fight him at all. Swagger got himself counted out. What a gentleman.

Next is everyone's favorite city bus, Mark Henry.


Henry also acted like he was going to get counted out, but then squeezed back into the ring to defeat the injured Orton.

So that's it! Short and sweet, but full of meat!


Watch tonight, 9/8c on USA!

R U READY TO DOWN SOME SMACK??? Bashed! at the Beach

Matt and Adam take the brand extension very seriously. They each only identify with one brand and actively follow it. Matt bleeds Raw red and Adam has Smackdown blue coursing through his veins. Being soldiers in the ongoing war for brand supremacy has charged both of them up enough to provide handy recaps of the previous week's show. That way, no new viewers will feel lost. Thus, every Monday and Friday, we here at LOL, Wresslin' will offer you a refresher. Hey, it's the least we can do.

What the hell? What the hell is this? Smackdown was DOMINATING this PPV? Seriously. Remember back in the early days of this feature, when every 3 weeks or so I'd just run a few Undertaker LOLs and that would be it for Smackdown PPV recap? Yea, no more. You see, Smackdown has consistently been the better brand in quality (if not ratings, unfortunately), so naturally the PPV shows will want to put the best show on, so as to entice future buys. Thus, Smackdown is all over The Bash.

Take for example, Smackdown's undercard. Dolph Ziggler has rapidly been rising the ranks on the blue show, and actually got his very first PPV match. No holds barred against The Great Khali. Yes, the giant has no charisma and can't work a lick, but the people love Slumdog Millionaire (since it makes us feel cultured to watch a foreign flick, even though it's in English, has a cast of people with Western features of beauty, and involves things like an M.I.A. soundtrack and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. But I digress.) Anyway, the Big Zig (I will make this catch on) made sure to take the big man down by using a chair. Not to sit with, but to hit with! And if that wasn't enough, Dolph had a little help in the way of The Big Red Machine, KANE!

"I'm mad they're booking me with you!"

Delicious? You damn right it's delicious!

Kane's pissed at Khali because of...racism I guess? Alls I know is that we're getting a Wrestlemania 23 rematch in the near future!

On to the title matches. First up, Melina defending against long time challenger, the fetching Michelle McCool! I must give props to Michelle for wearing her cross between the canyon of space between her fake breasts she calls "cleavage." There's no way natural boobs hang like that.

Fashionable

Here's a closeup I got while stalking her home on night:

Don't ask me how I got this

Anyway, as far as WWE presentation of women's matches go, this was pretty good! Both girls can work and had some pretty interesting spots. Like Michelle taking Melina's strongest attribute, her flexibility and agility, and uniquely turning it against her!

I know she's bent in a painful move, but I can't help but think...

So yea, Michelle won and became the first woman in history to win both the Divas' belt and the Women's title. I guess that's a woman's equivalent of a "triple crown" or "grand slam" or whatever. We all know the only title worth having though is becoming Mrs. Adam Jones.

I swear I've seen this in some movie before..

Rey Mysterio and Chris Jericho had another classic for the IC title. This time Rey put his mask on the line, so if he loses he'll be so ashamed he'll commit sepuko or give his son's custody up in a ladder match or something similar. Just know that this is important for Rey.

Anyway, Jericho did succeed in getting Rey's mask off. However, what he DIDN'T consider is that Rey would have a second, identical mask on underneath. This clearly threw his entire gameplan off, because I mean, who can take off two masks? That's just impossible.

Devilishly Diabolic, Rey

Also, there was a unified tag title match. Now I know that the unified tag titles are less important then the Divas title, and although they can be defended on any brand, both the champion Colon brothers and Priceless are Raw dudes. Should have been covered on Monday, right? Well no? Vince McMahon told Smackdown GM Teddy Long to dance, and well, he danced. He threw Edge (who was complaining about not being on this PPV card) and Chris Jericho (who we just read about) into the match just because he could. Obviously, the other four men were less then thrilled.

This is pretty much how the match went.

Still, this is how hard Smackdown rules. Despite not being in the match hardly at all, and despite already wresting a match before, both Edge and Jericho won the tag titles! Smackdown rules!

This looks familiar....

...kinda like this!

Finally, the bastion of morals and discipline (heel) champ, CM Punk, defended his title against fan favorite screw up, Jeff Hardy! We are all lucky to watch this one, but not as lucky as Jeff Hardy was to be in this predicament:

Oh God, please turn around...

Clearly this excited Jeff so much that he just mounted (heheh) a fantastic set of offense. He did all his usual spots of twists of fate and Swantons (which are in the archives, go look it up elsewhere), but he didn't get the pin. Why? Because that bad CM Punk wouldn't just let Jeff pin him, so he decided that despite not having the strength to kick out, he'd just put his foot on the ropes, thus breaking the pin. Doesn't expel energy, breaks up the pin, seems smart to me. Except somehow that means he's weak. I know, doesn't make sense to me either. Regardless, the aforementioned Swanton gave Punk some vision problems, and he mistook the referee for Jeff Hardy!

Jeff can't believe it!

Well, we can't have wrestlers going all willy nilly on the refs, can we? Jeff wins! But not the title? Oh well, rules are rules.

Really can't. Seriously, what a dick.

Still, this dude seemed to be ok with everything.

I'd really love it if he was an executive at Carl's Jr.

Come see what awful excuses Jeff Hardy has this week. 8/7 c, MyNetwork TV (or anytime on hulu.com!)

It's over...for real this time

We're sure all of you have been closely following Blog War '09. That's admirable, and we appreciate you being on our side, but frankly, what have you been following?

Truthfully, there hasn't been much "war" lately in Blog War '09. Both sides have seemed perfectly content to co-exist on the internet; Ray does her thing, we do ours, though at a clearly higher capacity. We've seemed to accept that we were fighting over a poorly-lit and dusty corner of the web, and that it didn't matter much anyway. It's as if two nations went to war over some little island somewhere, but neither side officially declared war in the first place. That would be silly.

Somewhere like this, just for example.

However, don't think this means there wasn't a winner. Of course there was a winner. It was us!

Hello? Two Kings.

We're sure you're asking yourself, "How can you declare yourself the winner when the war never really ended?" Well, we can, and here's how. First, we remind that the war DID end, no matter how much Ray wants to deny that she didn't crudely sign her name on the Terms of Surrender drawn up in MS Paint. Nevertheless, we'll let that one slide, seeing as how there's some contention as to whether that counts.

We direct you, rather, to her two guest postings here on LOL, Wresslin' (which, again, were part of her surrender, but moving on...). We noticed something interesting when we read them. Well, two things. First, they weren't as good as ours, but second, there seemed to be a hidden code. We've read/seen/heard of The Da Vinci Code, so we know more than your average bear about hidden meanings.



Here are the first paragraphs of both of her W.W.W. entries:

After spending last Wednesday in delightful Dallas, it was time to hop on a plane and make my way to glamorous New York so that Adam could hand-deliver my video for this week. How did he hand-deliver a YouTube video? Shut up! You’re spoiling it! My love affair with New York City goes back some way, and was fully consummated when I visited for the first time in 2001 (pre 9/11). It then grew in to a borderline obsession. Despite a short MTV fueled fascination with LA, New York City has always been my number one place on the map.

First of all, let me say how strange but particularly exciting it feels to be hanging out at the Texas branch of LOL Wresslin. I feel a little bit like I’m trespassing and am pretty sure I’ll open a door to have a bucket of water fall on my head or something. I was also wholly convinced that my video would be something odd and unfathomable, engineered to catch me out and leave me with nothing to say. Imagine my joy at finding a humorous CM Punk video in my email inbox.

Using a complicated system of algorithms derived from the cosine of Pi, the Fibonacci sequence, and the Pythagorean theorem, we found this pattern in her words:

After spending last Wednesday in delightful Dallas, it was time to hop on a plane and make my way to glamorous New York so that Adam could hand-deliver my video for this week. How did he hand-deliver a YouTube video? Shut up! You’re spoiling it! My love affair with New York City goes back some way, and was fully consummated when I visited for the first time in 2001 (pre 9/11). It then grew in to a borderline obsession. Despite a short MTV fueled fascination with LA, New York City has always been my number one place on the map.

First of all, let me say how strange but particularly exciting it feels to be hanging out at the Texas branch of LOL Wresslin. I feel a little bit like I’m trespassing and am pretty sure I’ll open a door to have a bucket of water fall on my head or something. I was also wholly convinced that my video would be something odd and unfathomable, engineered to catch me out and leave me with nothing to say. Imagine my joy at finding a humorous CM Punk video in my email inbox.

Which when rearranged (according to the same algorithms) say:

I love LOL, Wresslin'. I say humorous, delightful, glamorous and number one. I'm last. I'll catch Adam on my head. Me feels exciting obsession consummated.

Now, we're not entirely sure what that last part means, but the math says it's in there, so we'll chalk that up to a cultural misunderstanding. In any case, she clearly has great words for us, and ranks the wrestling comedy blogs thusly:

1. Adam and Matt of LOL, Wresslin'
2. Ray of Wrestlegasm

Thank you for all the support over the past months, and we're so proud that we could be victorious for you. In celebration, we think you should light up some fireworks this weekend. You can wait until Saturday. It's cool.

W.W.W. featuring Kurt Angle/Tazz and The Hogans

On Wednesdays, we here at LOL, Wresslin' like to really pull out the stops and offer up a double shot of righteously killer content. Why Wednesday? Well, we could impress you with market research, work habit studies, and human psychology tendencies to show you there's a scientific reason the middle of the week is the best time to bring your A-game. However, truth be told, we don't have any of that stuff and settled on Wednesday because that was the only day that didn't have any content scheduled.

So, here you have "Watch Wresslin' Wednesdays." Please feel free to suggest a better title, because we are woefully uncreative when it comes to naming stuff.

Better at naming stuff then us

The idea of W.W.W. is we each send the other a video that is related to wrestling (a match, promo, interview, guest starring spot, etc.). The only restriction is that it cannot be user-created, so your Mystery Science Theater 3000-esq alternate commentary of Steamboat/Savage from Wrestlemania III ain't gonna fly here, pal. Neither of us know what kind of video we're going to get that day.

After viewing, we each write a response. This could be anything we choose: a straight commentary, a philosophical enlightenment, or classless ridicule. Just as we don't know what kind of video the other will select, neither do we know what the other will write or how they will write it. What you end up with is a mash-up of styles, which in our book equates to two-blogs-in-one, and we can take the rest of the day off.

(Note: Matt is taking the week off, so our counter-part from across the pond, Ray of Wrestlegasm, is filling in this week.)


Adam's video to Ray- Tazz vs Kurt Angle (Tazz's WWF debut)



Ray's response...

After spending last Wednesday in delightful Dallas, it was time to hop on a plane and make my way to glamorous New York so that Adam could hand-deliver my video for this week. How did he hand-deliver a YouTube video? Shut up! You’re spoiling it! My love affair with New York City goes back some way, and was fully consummated when I visited for the first time in 2001 (pre 9/11). It then grew in to a borderline obsession. Despite a short MTV fueled fascination with LA, New York City has always been my number one place on the map.

Speaking of NYC, my video was cram-packed full of New Yorkers. (See what I did there?) Last week’s video didn’t require much thinking time on my part. It involved CM Punk and cheerleaders. Two of my favourite things in the whole world. Piece o’cake. Being the hard task-master he is, Adam forced me to do some actual research this week.

I had been watching wrestling for about two years in 2000, which means I was probably so fixated on The Rock when this took place, I didn’t pay much attention to it. But I have got a vague memory of this, mainly because the crowd were so bloody hostile towards Kurt Angle. New Yorkers – notoriously the most demanding and

hard-to-please sports fans on the planet.

I remember not really knowing who Tazz was. This was his WWE debut. ECW was almost impossible to catch on TV over here ten years ago. Yes, kids, there was a time when Vince didn’t own everything and download torrents didn’t exist. What a backwards age it was! But what I did figure out very swiftly after Tazz’s introduction to the mainstream was that he was the real deal. The shit. The dog’s bollocks. I didn’t know much about ECW, but I knew it was badass.

I never cared much for Kurt Angle. I know he was supposed to be dorky, but he always felt a little too ‘real dork’ for me. And when he started following Stephanie McMahon around like a lost little lamb, he crossed over in to creepy-town. There’s nothing more endearing than when a man uses a friendly hug to feel you up, right ladies?

Although, it was fun watching Triple H do the whole git-yo-hains-offa-mah-womin routine.

That being said, I’ve got a lot of admiration for Angle in this video. As someone who also came up against New York City and lost (I’ll save that story for another day) it takes a lot of guts to stand in front of some 20,000 people jacked-up on Essence-de-Brooklyn and stay cool, calm, collected and composed. I’ve got to be honest, despite fighting a good Internet war, faced with this angry mob, I’d probably burst in to tears and wait for whichever wrestle-hunk who felt sorry for me to let me cry on his shoulder. But not Kurt. He stood strong and proud. What a hero! An American Hero, no less.

Ok, so it wasn’t quite as rough as when John Cena put himself in the line of fire against RVD on ECW. That was some hardcore hostility. But still, a big Glastonbury Festival style cheer for Kurt’s stellar efforts.

And just to keep my reputation for inconsistency and flip-flopping alive, seriously, how amazing were that crowd? Thanks to the current PG rating on Raw and Smackdown, you just don’t get that kind of fire these days. And as a girl who loves her contact sports and has a healthy thirst for controlled violence, I think it’s a damn shame.

There I was, watching this video, trying to place it in some sort of wrestling timeline in my mind, when Tazz’s entrance music started playing. And as the heart monitor beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeped, I felt a little crunch of excitement behind my ribs, like…. NOW IT’S ON. If wrestling ever stops giving me those tingly feelings in my chest, I’ll quit. For good. And that’s not a Ric Flair-esque ‘for good.’ I actually mean it.

Ray's video to Adam- The Pulse: December 16th, 2006



Adam's response...

In the hierarchy of broadcasting, free city newspaper supplemental Youtube show ranks just above "high school morning PA announcements" and just below "Armed Forces' Radio Network." Still, we all have to start somewhere, and I suppose even Columbus, Ohio should get a fair shake (although Scott Steiner would say different). Time to put that electronic media degree to work...

So The Pulse opens with John Ross, an "Alive Reporter." Well that's good to know although after watching this video I sincerely hope Mr. Ross was the opposite. I mean, as cool as a zombie reporter would be, I don't think I'm ready for the apocalypse just yet. You know (tm), Old Testament. Real wrath of God type stuff. Fire coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

Oh, the show is called The Pulse because it's a complement to "alive", the newspaper.



Anyway, do you know (tm) how you can tell if someone is a bad writer? No, not if he writes for the Columbus Alive. It's if he speaks in a very writerly way. His entire life is sprinkled with some prose dust just so he can subtly remind you that he has, in fact, read Wuthering Heights AND One Hundred Years of Solitude. And that was just for his thesis! You should see the off beat, indie stuff in his bookshelf! John Ross is one of these assholes. He calls Brooke Hogan "fetching." I'm going to avoid the obvious joke and just center in on Mr. Ross here. Fetching? Seriously? I know it's not journalistically responsible to say "bangable" or "stupid", but you could go with a less awful word. How about "charming" or "charismatic"? Those are nonsense words which won't make you sound like a John Ross douche.

Oh, and he called the Lewis Center Walmart a "noted local hot spot." I sincerely hope that was some form of writerly irony, because if that was serious you really should go kill yourself. Kill yourself because you thought that was a good intro, or kill yourself because it's true. I really don't care. Just die face first in a puddle.

Thankfully he kicks it to the other Brooke, field entertainment reporter Brooke Williams.

I'd totally hit that

More writer exaggeration right out of the get go as Ms (I hope!). Williams describes the autograph signing as "pandemonium"

Above: A small gathering

Let's check out the dictionary definition of pandemonium:

pan⋅de⋅mo⋅ni⋅um

  [pan-duh-moh-nee-uhm]

–noun

1.	wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos.

2.	a place or scene of riotous uproar or utter chaos.

3.	(often initial capital letter) the abode of all the demons.

4.

Hell

Ok, definition four certainly applies. It is Walmart after all. Please continue.

Still, let's take a look at this pandemonium shot again.

See if you can find the hidden secret. Leave comments! Winner gets a prize!

It's just sloppy, and not just because of the slob on the right. No it's sloppy because we hear Ms. Williams give a camera direction right before they cut. You mean to tell me they couldn't have used some other footage. They were afraid they'd go long on an interview with Brooke Freakin' Hogan and needed to conserve as much tape as possible?


To continue the stupidity, Ms. Williams speaks to the fans. Well, not so much as speaks as much as they grunt out syllables. Here's a priceless exchange.

Brooke Williams: So uh...you're here to meet Hulk...would you say you're Hulkamaniacs?

Slack-jawed Yokels: No

And thus, you have now heard every first date I've ever been on.

At least one guy dressed appropriately

Ms. Williams continues on to interview more yokels, only this time they're famous yokels! The Hogans, brother! She asks some hard hitting questions, like how likely is a duet between father and daughter. Brooke gives the diplomatic answer of "Only if he plays bass" which is a smart move considering this bad boy, and Hulk gives the smarter answer of "Only if she wants to end her career." This can attest to Hulk's singing ability. Of course, three years later Brooke and Hulk must have recorded a duet, because that's the only explanation for her current success.

Then they segue into talking about Brooke's new albu..zzzzzzzz

I take back my previous "I'd hit that" comment

That's it for the wrestling segment, but I'd be remiss if I did not mention the closing part of this news broadcast; Hardwire, all about the, you guessed it, local music scene. Because that makes so much sense to name a live music segment after electronic hardware. It's hosted by some dork named Chris Deville. I assume that's how it's spelled since he's apparently not good enough for his own name graphic.

You're a nothing and you will forever remain a nothing

Here's a little fashion tip for the fellas out there. You might want to listen (read?) up, becasue I'm a pretty snazzy dresser and a fantastic dancer to boot. Don't ever wear a tie without a jacket. Seriously. You look like a chubby kid when you do this. And you look poor. I'm no classist, but yea, you look poor. If you don't own a jacket, don't wear a tie. It's that simple.

You know (tm) what, The Pulse? Don't even bother. I hate you so much that you're all hopeless. You know (tm) what my wish is? My deepest of all wishes. I wish I could be gang raped by a group of needle sharing homosexuals, just so I get AIDS. All for the sole purpose of having sex with you, so you can die from the AIDS that I gave you. I'm not even joking.

Ok, yes I am, LOLZ.