Why would I need to be called genocidal? I've never even killed one person, let alone many people which would constitute genocide.

"At home drawing pictures
Of mountain tops with him on top
Lemon yellow sun, arms raised in a V
And the dead lay in pools of maroon below
Daddy didn't give attention
To the fact that mommy didn't care
King Jeremy the wicked
Ruled his world
Jeremy spoke in class today
Jeremy spoke in class today."
-"Jeremy," Pearl Jam

Summer really cuts down on my music consumption. I don't use my laptop, which has all of my music on it, because there's no wireless connection in my house. And I'm too broke to buy an iPod, before you ask. I watch a lot of TV because there's at least one baseball game on per day, plus the NBA Finals, plus the World Cup, plus Star Trek re-runs, and that leaves very little CD time. And the only radio I listen to is, well, more baseball. So "Jeremy" wins the quote at the beginning of this entry because it's the only song I've listened to in forever, plus I think I could craft a good villain for a thriller or a sci-fi action flick out of the titular character. Huh huh, titular.

As for the title of the post, observant wrestling and movie fans may recognize it as a strange hybrid between a great line from "Wayne's World" and the ridiculous nickname of ECW wrestler Sabu. The line is the famous "gun rack" rant, and the wrestler's nickname is "The Homocidal, Suicidal, Genocidal, Death-Defying" Sabu. That is just wrong for so many reasons. For one thing, homocidal is a fitting, albeit a tad overindulgent thing to call a wrestler. After all, very few men have ever actually died during wrestling matches, and almost never after pre-meditation that would constitute homicide. And it would be hard to stay suicidal for as long as Sabu has been wrestling without either being committed or finally getting the job done and offing himself. But worst of all is genocidal. I mean, I can buy that the guy goes to such lengths to hurt his opponents that it looks as if he wants to kill them. I can even stomach that the risks he takes to win imply that he has a deathwish. But genocidal means he either intends to or already has killed an entire race of people. And even if that weren't too ridiculous a gimmick for a pro wrestler (sadly, it actually isn't), there's no way a 5'10", 220-pound guy from Detroit who pretends to be from Bombay would have the nuclear arsenal required to pull off such profound acts of atrocity. And to top all of that off by saying the guy wants to kill other individuals, himself and entire races but defies death is embarassingly inane; and an oxymoron to boot. So to sum up, the name is ridiculous. But thanks to the launch of the new, WWE-financed version of ECW, I get to hear about the "homocidal, suicidal" et cetera several times a week between RAW, Smackdown and the new weekly ECW show on the Sci-Fi channel. You read right, a wrestling show on the Sci-Fi channel.

That brings me to my purpose in writing this entry. I believe that the over-hyping of Sabu and his ludicrous adjectives as well as the TV deal with Sci-Fi represent in short what is wrong with the new, corporate ECW. But let me start at the beginning. For those not in the know, the original ECW came along in the mid-90s during a slow period for pro wrestling that almost put the enitre industry into the toilet, making its mark while Vince McMahon's WWF and Ted Turner's WCW were floundering. It started as Eastern Championship Wrestling, one of the thousands of small, independently-owned regional wrestling groups that still populate the high school gyms, state fairs and oversized barns of America. ECW came under new ownership in 1993 when Paul Heyman, a former manager character for WCW, bought it from its previous owners and took over full financial and creative control. He renamed it Extreme Championship Wrestling, and populated its roster with a combination of vaguely recognizable WCW and WWF castoffs and journeyman independent wrestlers who were short on talent and usually had a drug addiction, criminal record or a few screws loose. He then gambled and changed the focus of ECW's shows from the same old tired stuff to exactly the kind of content that WWF and WCW had to avoid in order to keep their cable TV contracts. ECW became defined by excessive violence, sexuality and profanity in the form of edgy storylines and chaotic wrestling matches that followed none of the rules that WWF and WCW matches did. Heyman figured that those rules didn't matter since wrestling matches were pre-determined and they were only enforced when convenient, so there was no reason to be restricted by them. And ECW wasn't on cable, they were on local TV late at night. There was little chance they would get kicked off the air, and even if they did, hardly anyone was watching, so no big loss. Well, Heyman's gamble paid off and ECW formed a rabid following that congregated for their shows every week in, appropriately enough, a now infamous converted bingo hall in South Philadelphia. The city known for having the most cynical and unforgiving fans in the world never disappointed in the ECW Arena, viciously jeering pretty boys and traditional do-gooders while worshipping chain smokers, potheads and yes, even the "homicidal, suicidal" blah-blah-blah. The word spread, and wrestling fans across the USA became desperate to find ECW on television. People started coming in from around the world to visit the Arena, proving the benefits of having your shows in the same place all the time.

ECW became an underground, cult phenomenon, and eventually WWF and WCW were forced to take notice of their possible competitor. They did so in their own distinct ways. WCW Vice President Eric Bischoff tried to bury the company by signing its most talented wrestlers to lucrative WCW contracts. Vince McMahon, on the other hand, floated ECW money in order to help save it from Heyman's abysmal money-management skills and also invited Heyman and his wrestlers onto WWF television in order to promote their shows. He believed in healthy competition where Bischoff believed in eliminating threats. In any case, Vince's help and Heyman's innovations canceled out Bischoff's treachery, and ECW was very close to becoming a serious third power in the wrestling business when they finally got a deal to display their product on pay-per-view TV starting in April of 1997. After that, Heyman knew that the final piece of the puzzle was a national cable TV deal, but by the time he got it in 1999, he had to settle for The Nashville Network, which catered to a decidedly non-ECW audience. Worse yet, most of his best talent had left for WCW or WWF, which had started using ECW like a minor league developmental territory. Heyman had serious issues with TNN management stifling ECW's edgy content and constantly moving around their timeslot. The hellish TV deal ended badly with low ratings and ECW's cancellation, and Heyman's money troubles finally caught up with him. The company went bankrupt and sold all its trademarks and licensing rights to the WWF in 2001. Heyman himself took a job with the WWF as its new color commentator and member of the writing staff. The bad seed was apparently dead.

WWF had also bought the bankrupt WCW by this time, and ECW was reborn-kind of-as part of an embarassing effort by Vince McMahon to stick it to his mortal enemy Turner. McMahon started by introducing a watered-down version of WCW and contemplated giving it its own full compliment of wrestlers and weekly shows. When the first experimental WCW matches proved to be god-awful, Vince tanked that plan and added a watered-down version of ECW to WCW to make the Alliance, a lame-ass group of bumbling bad guys who posed a half-ass threat to take over the WWF. In truth, the new ECW looked like a hit...for about an hour on one Monday night. It was made up of all the former ECW wrestlers now holding WWF contracts, and when they banded together to attack a contingent of WWF stars, fans of the old ECW recognized what was going on and exploded. All the momentum was lost later in the show, however, when the new owner of ECW in the storyline was revealed to be Vince's daughter Stephanie. Hardcore and casual fans alike smelled a rat right away, and soon found that almost all remnants of the real ECW had indeed been swept away. The WCW-ECW alliance was thankfully dead by November of 2001.

The reason that version of ECW didn't take was that wrestling fans are not as foolish as Vince often thinks. He was giving them ECW wrestlers, but they weren't doing any of the things that had made ECW so popular. ECW was defined by being counter-culture and inherently opposed to authority, the establishment and what big business said was cool. And being part of a faceless gaggle of generic bad guys did not fit that bill. But ECW's following didn't give up In fact it often seemed as if it was growing despite ECW's timely demise. You see, beginning in 1997, Vince stole something even more important than ECW's talent; he jumpstarted a new era of prosperity for the WWF by stealing many of ECW's ideas. He infused his shows with more violence, bad language and sex. He called it "WWF Attitude," while ECW had called it business as usual. But it was all the same stuff. And from then on, those elements became frequent at WWF shows as well. And anytime fans of the old ECW were in attendance at WWF shows and saw things that reminded them of the bingo hall, they would chant "ECW" just as they did during "extreme" moments in the South Philly shows. This was how ECW lived on, and many people knew it. WWF employees who had been a part of ECW knew that those chants meant there was a small but vocal portion who wanted ECW back, and thought that at the very least, ECW deserved a chance to at least say goodbye properly.

That was how "The Rise and Fall of ECW" DVD came about. Released early last year, the DVD was in my opinion the best that WWE's home video division has ever produced. In an extensive 2+ hour featurette, it used the ECW tape library that McMahon now owns as well as interviews with a lot of ECW's key players to give a truly honest and comprehensive history of the company. It was the most genuine, non-corporate sanitzed piece of work I've ever seen from WWE in regards to a competitor. Maybe Vince was proud of his role in keeping ECW alive. Maybe no one really cared what went on a dead company's history video. But for whatever reason, the real ECW finally came through on this DVD. And the response was huge.

So huge, in fact, that Vince had to sit up and take notice of ECW again. Sales of the DVD were very high, making it one of WWE's best-selling pieces of merchandise ever, right up there with the Austin 3:16 t-shirts and Wrestling Buddies dolls that I'm sure you've all at least seen someone with when you were growing up. ECW chants became more and more frequent, to the point that WWE's front office may have been annoyed that a defunct company was more over with their audience than a lot of their wrestlers. So it happened that when former ECW star Rob Van Dam proposed bringing ECW back for one night in June on a pay-per-view, he found Mr. McMahon to be surprisingly receptive. Numbers didn't lie, and if that pay-per-view sold anywhere near as well as the DVD, Vince was sitting on quite a large windfall. Sadly, Van Dam couldn't wrestle on that pay-per-view due to a serious knee injury, but it didn't suffer much for his absence. In fact, Van Dam was still there, hobbled as he was, and his impassioned interview about his desire to bring ECW back and how the fans made it happen was just one high point on a night that gave an amazing representation of what made ECW great. The event had everything: garbagey, ultra-violent wrestling combined with doses of mat-based wizardry and crazy aerial risk-taking and even women getting beer licked off of their breasts. Not only that, but ECW showed off its famed audacity by swearing up a storm on the live broadcast and unabashedly criticizing the corporate image of WWE even though everyone knew Vince McMahon was paying for the whole damn thing. Now granted, it was clear that Vince didn't have full confidence in ECW's marketability by itself. There were WWE fingerprints on the show, as it was promoted on WWE TV in the weeks leading up to the show using a storyline of disgruntled WWE bad guys wanting to invade the show and destroy ECW's reunion party. That gave McMahon an excuse to have a group of his own talent be on the show. They were treated as pariahs by the hardcore ECW crowd in the small Manhattan Center ballroom that was very reminiscent of the bingo hall. That didn't change the fact that pure WWE fans who didn't know anything about ECW still bought the show to see what the "anti-ECW crusaders" would do. But that wasn't the lasting image of the night. The lasting image was the main event ending with ECW's version of Rocky, Tommy Dreamer, being slammed through a flaming card table. That was followed by the ECW roster overpowering the WWE invaders and then celebrating with beer over Eric Bischoff's fallen body (the former WCW V.P. who had attempted to kill ECW had to swallow his pride and get his comeuppance because he worked for WWE at the time). As ECW play-by-play announcer Joey Styles screamed "ECW lives!" with one of the most involved and excited wrestling crowds ever chanting in the background, you knew that the tribe of extreme had gotten it right just despite Vince's influence, even if WWE did edit out all the swearing on subsequent broadcasts. For one night they had produced the closest thing possible to the real ECW. It was a fitting farewell.

The problem is, it didn't end there. Several ECW alumni earned WWE contracts based on their performance at the pay-per-view, which wasn't the financial success the DVD had been, but still held its own with WWE's biggest shows of 2005. Rob Van Dam's role in the ECW comeback earned him a lot of street cred, and his return from injury came amongst serious fanfare and a push toward the main event from WWE's creative minds. All of this was leading somewhere, but it wasn't clear just what that might be until rumors of another one, maybe even two ECW pay-per-views in 2006 came to the surface. As the Second One Night Stand (another oxymoronic name in a series from ECW) pay-per-view event approached, the rumors grew to include WWE trying to sign long-term contracts with even more ECW stars in order to attempt to give ECW its own weekly show. All of that has since come to fruition with Rob Van Dam winning the WWE championship at Another One Night Stand (its working title), followed by the debut of ECW on Sci-Fi. Now the promotion of the new ECW has been huge. It is annoying, and it is all over USA, the network that owns WWE Raw as well as the Sci-Fi channel, and UPN which airs Smackdown. But that is to be understood. It's the same when any show premieres. The problem I have with it is that it has also taken up a large portion of time within WWE broadcasts, not just during commercial breaks. Over the past month, I have heard Paul Heyman talking what seems like every half hour or so about either One Night Stand on pay-per-view or "ECW, every Tuesday night at 10 (9 central) on Sci-Fi." And since Sabu is one of the biggest stars left over from the old days, he gets quite a lot of promotion to himself. Heyman loves nicknames a bit too much anyway, but when he's in full-on shameless promotion mode he goes into marketable t-shirt-worthy moniker overdrive, hence my frustration. And while I appreciate that Heyman shills with a clear sense of irony, just because he acknowledges the irony doesn't excuse it in my eyes. Shameless corporate advertising is very WWE, but it is not ECW. The original, the real ECW didn't worry about that stuff because of being on local TV and not on pay-per-view. Some would say that was a fault and something that held their company back from becoming a major player. I say it was part of a conscious choice to keep their programming against the grain and too rough for basic cable and their advertisers to handle. Sure, it didn't make ECW a lot of money, but it helped to make them different, and their differences are what attracted their intensely loyal following in the first place. I believe the new ECW is losing touch with that fanbase under WWE's dominion, and if that happens ECW will be just as doomed as when they were part of the Alliance.

And there is yet more evidence. Heyman used to be very vocal about how horrible his TV deal with TNN was, because they fought to make ECW a more palatable product for their conservative, southern audience. Now he's signed with Sci-Fi, and as part of the new deal he's had to concede to the channel's top brass that he introduce science fiction-oriented wrestlers so as not to alienate their usual audience. Thus on ECW's big premiere show last week, we were treated to the Zombie, a scruffy-haired local wrestler dressed in torn flannel, wearing dark shadows around his eyes, wandering around and groaning into a microphone. Now it's true, he was quickly ridiculed by the announcers and brutalized by ECW mainstay The Sandman and his trusty Singapore cane, but I saw right through ECW's charade of sticking it to their new network. The fact that they had to cave in and let the Zombie on the show in the first place proves they are not the old ECW. Not to mention that a vignette later in the show suggested a new vampire character was on the way in the weeks to come. Furthermore, the rest of the show sucked. The main event was a battle royal, a type of match that involves a whole bunch of guys throwing punches and trying to make it look like they're pushing each other over the ropes out of the ring without actually doing it. And sure, weapons were used, but they were lame WWE comedy weapons like trash can lids and street signs. The match wasn't violent or bloody, it was just boring. It was dominated, but not won, by the Big Show. Show "defected" to ECW along with fellow established WWE star Kurt Angle in an effort to beef up ECW's roster with well-known WWE talent. This tactic was used with good result at both a prime time USA special and the One Night Stand pay-per-view. They each featured ECW mainstays wrestling familiar WWE faces, and I had no problem with that. Vince and his writers figured all the talent is under one roof, why not mix them together and help sell all three brands? That I'm okay with, especially when at One Night Stand the WWE guys were villified for not being ECW originals and still used the "hardcore" ECW style. But the pay-per-view is over now, and the cross-promotion should be, too. It's time for ECW to get by on its own merits in my opinion, but Vince still doesn't trust them to do that. That's why Big Show and Angle will be on ECW's show every week, and I'm guessing they won't be the last "defectors." That's why Sci-Fi got its wish with science fiction characters on the wrestling show. That's why Heyman is an omnipresent promotional machine on Raw and Smackdown. WWE is afraid ECW won't sell if it doesn't develop a new audience. But I reiterate, the problem is that if they're not careful they will lose the original loyalist fanbase in the process, and then ECW will have nothing. Case in point, the lowest-rated segment of the ECW premiere on Sci-Fi was the one involving WWE stars Edge and John Cena looking for revenge for what happened at One Night Stand. The ECW fans are tired of WWE poking its rich, bloated ass in their product, and I'm guessing it will be vice versa for WWE fans before too long. But WWE isn't getting that point just yet. Sadly, the segment following the one with Cena and Edge had Paul Heyman promising ECW would invade Raw the following week, and tonight he did show up on Raw-but only to make a match involving WWE wrestlers on ECW's show tomorrow night. And the next WWE pay-per-view will feature, you guessed it, the "Homocidal, Suicidal, Genocidal, Death-Defying" Sabu in an ECW rules match against Cena. So I'm in for more non-sensical nickname nausea, and fans are going to have to keep hoping the real ECW shows up soon. There is hope, however. The highest-rated segment on the first ECW on Sci-Fi show involved a character named Kelly, a buxom blonde claiming to be an "exhibitionist" who will be teasing 18-34-year-old male fans by getting almost naked every week. That proves that whether it's the old ECW, WWE, WCW, or the new WWECW as the internet is calling it, some things never change. And they always work.

Hits quicker than a hiccup:
-The Sci-Fi show did suck, but the prime time special and One Night Stand 2 were both highly enjoyable. I gotta say, though, that I never expected to see a Sabu match end without a finish. Sabu is the same guy who has finished matches with broken jaws, broken ribs and after sealing up a gigantic gash in his arm with super glue. The only thing he has ever stopped a match for was a broken neck. Yet after crashing through a table along with his opponent Rey Misterio at the PPV, Sabu was declared unfit to continue by a whiny physician on the scene. All I know is, he walked away from the wreck, so I feel cheated. I paid $40 to see you kill yourself like you always do, and you puss out now? You're not hardcore. Now 60-year-old Terry Funk, who spent half of his match stuck on a board covered in barbed wire and had me convinced it had claimed his eye, he gave me my money's worth. But to quote the Joker, I am a "vicious bastard." I was also impressed by the efforts of the retired Mick Foley, who set himself on fire for my amusement, Tajiri, Super Crazy and the Full-Blooded Italians for overcoming their respective stereotypes to put on a great tag match, and John Cena for giving a great hardcore effort despite endless attacks by the holier-than-thou ECW fans. He almost silenced the burning "You Can't Wrestle" and "Same Old Shit" chants after he launched Rob Van Dam's head through that chair. The most "hardcore" moment of the night had to go to WWE star Edge, ironically enough. He "pinned" Tommy Dreamer's wife Beulah McGillicuty by bending her in half and thrusting his pelvis on top of her nether-regions with Tommy lying only a few feet away. My hat is off to you, good sir.

-I recently purchased the DVD of Wrestlemania and if anyone's interested, you can see me on camera at one point. Right after the bell rings to end the first match, after Kane has pinned Carlito, you can notice me standing up and applauding in the lower right portion of the screen. I'm wearing a White Sox jersey and man do I look chubby. It works best if you slow down the speed on the DVD and use your remote's zoom button. Okay, it's not much of an appearance, and yes I am a huge nerd, but come on. That means I was seen by millions of people worldwide live on TV, even if none of them knew it. Maybe I'm on imdb now.

-It's been a couple of weeks and a 6-game losing streak since I first thought this, but I think the Cubs would have a really awesome lineup if everyone was hitting at or near their ability. Pierre is among the best pure leadoff men when he's on, Walker is a pretty strong number 2 hitter with some pop, Barrett is rock solid, Ramirez and Nevin can kill the ball, Jacque Jones may be the team's best hitter, and Murton and Cedeno can be brilliant at times. You put Derrek Lee back in there, and it really looks amazing on paper. The problem is, the Cubs can't get all those guys to be on at the same time or for very long. Case in point, Henry Blanco is currently their best hitter. Heck, Jon Garland would be the team's best hitter if he played on the North Side. Need I really say anything more? And I felt even better about the potential of the pitching staff until Mark Prior came back from the DL with nothing on his pitches. One of my personal heroes, Jeremy Piven, was at the park to sing the seventh-inning stretch that day and probably summed up Prior's performance best: "Isn't batting practice over?" He may not get a lot of Cubs fans to go see his new low-budget Jewtastic romp that way, but at least he speaks the truth. Oh, and the Sox rule.

-You know between Tom Zbikowski becoming a circus-entrance prize fighter and all these Bears bitching about their contracts, I am seriously doubting the devotion to old school traditionalism of my two favorite football teams. What these guys lacked in recent success, they made up for by being no-nonsense grinders who suffered through harsh midwestern conditions and never took shortcuts. Now ND fires coaches early and lowers their academic standards and the Monsters of the Midway are a bunch of whiny money grubbers. If I wanted all that, I'd root for Florida schools and teams outside the NFC North.

-For the record to anyone who reads this: I don't like getting stood up or backed out on by friends, but I always accept it because I know I'm guilty of it myself from time to time. But one pet peeve, one thing I really cannot stand is when people make me think we're going to a movie and we don't. Especially during the summer. Hello, people, movies are my life. I have a fuckin' degree in them for the love of Pete! And if it gets much worse, I may have to resort to going to movies alone just so I get the full summer viewing experience. And I don't know what would be sadder to attend alone, Nacho Libre or The Break-up. Please don't force me to make that choice.

-On that note, I'm of mixed feelings on X-Men 3. I saw it twice, liked it both times, but never really got full satisfaction out of it. Part of the problem is that film degree has made me a cynic. I know how the business works, and it irks me sometimes. Same deal with Cars. Although I didn't want to like it as much as I did X3, the fact that the whole movie was such a blatant appeal to the wallets of the bible belt made it hard to giggle along with Dr. Brent at otherwise funny touches such as George Carlin as a stoned VW bus or the John Ratzenberger credits. Next on my to-see list has to be the above-mentioned laffers followed by Superman and then bring on Pirates 2. Sweet Kiera Knightley, back into my life.

-I'll be back in the Bend in a week. I'm trying really hard not to think about my idyllic life of lying around watching baseball and eating Tom and Jerry's like a beached manatee morphing into six days a week of lugging set pieces and taking acting classes in the South Bend heat. Aiea, my dear, remind me again why I thought this would be fun?

When people ask about my future, I think to myself, "Well, it's either back in D-Town or Jersey. Would you call that a future?" I wish I were back in high school. Peace to the nations of Zulu and Islam.
~Jakeman